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30088. (Nic­colò Paganini) Sonata #2 in D for Vio­lin & Gui­tar “Cen­tone di Sonate”, Op.64a
. . . . . MS112 #2
30089. (Nic­colò Paganini) Grande Sonata for Vio­lin & Gui­tar in A, Op.39 MS3
30090. (Nic­colò Paganini) Sonata Con­cer­tata for Gui­tar & Vio­lin in A, Op.61 MS2
30091. (Nic­colò Paganini) Cantabile in D for Vio­lin and Gui­tar, Op.17 MS109
30092. (Waka Flocka Flame) Big Homie Flocka
30093. (Wreck­less Eric) The Won­der­ful World of Wreck­less Eric
30094. (Avril Lav­i­gne) Let Go
30095. (Guil­laume Dufay) Ave Maris Stella
30096. (Guil­laume Dufay) Ave Regina Coelo­rum à 4
30097. (Gruff Rhys) Babels­burg
30098. (Demi Lovato) Don’t For­get
30099. (John Gay & Johann Pepusch) The Beggar’s Opera [com­plete opera; d. Sar­gent;
. . . . . Cameron, Mori­son, Sin­clair]
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Those of us who admire a wild and irrev­er­ent spirit in music have long looked to Charles Ives (1874–1954) as our patron saint. With his mul­ti­met­ric chaos, his noisy brass bands, cheer­ful mix­ing of pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal themes, his tem­po­ral dys­syn­chronies and his star­tling flights into the infi­nite, he ful­filled every require­ment for an eccen­tric genius ahead of his time. And he was pro­foundly, quin­tes­sen­tially Amer­i­can. But he was lit­tle known in his life­time. The bulk of his com­po­si­tions were writ­ten then tucked away, unper­formed, in a New Eng­land barn while he pur­sued a more suc­cess­ful career as an insur­ance sales­man. He also pub­lished pam­phlets advo­cat­ing what we would now call “direct democ­racy” and got into a heated argu­ment with a young Franklin Roo­sevelt over his idea of pro­mot­ing gov­ern­ment bonds cheap enough for the ordi­nary cit­i­zen. But it was not until the 1960’s that his works were fre­quently played, and his name became famil­iar to clas­si­cal musi­cians and lis­ten­ers. Much of this change came about through the ardent advo­cacy of con­duc­tor Leonard Bern­stein. It is pos­si­ble to lis­ten to a per­for­mance of Ives’ Sym­phony #4 today and expe­ri­ence it as “mod­ern, avant-garde music” even though it was com­posed in the 1910s! (It wasn’t per­formed until 1965).

But fas­ci­nat­ing as Ives is, he is not alone in the story of Amer­i­can music. Another com­poser, liv­ing a full cen­tury before him, shared many of Ives’ char­ac­ter­is­tics. Like Ives, he was self-taught, eccen­tric, exper­i­men­tal and ahead of his time. Like Ives, he wore his patri­o­tism on his sleeve, loved loud noises and order dis­guised as chaos, and was drawn to tran­scen­den­tal themes. He died 13 years before Ives was born, and Ives prob­a­bly never heard of him. Unlike Ives, how­ever, he has found no high-profile cham­pion. His works are played only occa­sion­ally and few peo­ple have heard them.

The man in ques­tion was Anthony Philip Hein­rich. He was born in 1781, in the north­ern­most vil­lage of Bohemia, in what was then a pre­dom­i­nantly German-speaking part of that land. Like Ives, he pur­sued a suc­cess­ful career as a busi­ness­man, rel­e­gat­ing music to a hobby. But the Napoleonic wars ruined him, and he found him­self pen­ni­less in Boston in 1810. He plunged into a new life enthu­si­as­ti­cally, deter­mined to be a wan­der­ing musi­cian on the open­ing fron­tier. He trav­eled mostly on foot, liv­ing rough, through Penn­syl­va­nia, Ohio and Ken­tucky. This expe­ri­ence instilled in him a pro­found love of nature and an ide­al­is­tic patri­o­tism for his adopted coun­try. Finally he set­tled in a log cabin in Ken­tucky and began to com­pose. Amer­ica as yet had no real sym­phony orches­tras and few trained musi­cians. His larger com­po­si­tions could only be played in Europe. Even­tu­ally, he par­tic­i­pated in found­ing the New York Phil­har­monic, and achieved some pub­lic suc­cess, but this quickly faded, and he died, reduced again to poverty, in 1861.

His music not only drew on Amer­i­can folk music and on the melodies and rhythms of Native Amer­i­cans [Comanche Revel; Man­i­tou Mys­ter­ies; The Cherokee’s Lament; Sioux Gal­liarde], but it was sat­u­rated with the sig­na­ture ele­ment of Amer­i­can music: impro­vi­sa­tion. Musi­col­o­gists would no doubt clas­sify him as his century’s most con­sis­tent prac­ti­tioner of musi­cal inde­ter­mi­nacy. Bird song filled his music, which often sported spec­tac­u­larly grand ornitho­log­i­cal titles: The Columbiad, or Migra­tion of Amer­i­can Wild Pas­sen­ger Pigeons and The Ornitho­log­i­cal Com­bat of Kings. Per­haps the piece that sums him up is the vocal/orchestral suite, The Dawn­ing of Music in Ken­tucky, or, the Plea­sures of Har­mony in the Soli­tudes of Nature. Noth­ing he com­posed fol­lowed the musi­cal con­ven­tions of Europe. Alto­gether, I’ve heard 18 of his works, and all of them gave me plea­sure, while some of them seemed to me both rad­i­cal and pro­found. In other words, the qual­i­ties that drew me to Ives were present in Hein­rich a cen­tury before.

It’s impor­tant, in this dark time for Amer­ica, to remem­ber that the nation that has sunk to the level of elect­ing a scur­rilous con-man, crim­i­nal and trai­tor to its high­est office has in the past, over and over again, nur­tured cre­ative men and women imbued with the spirit of lib­erty, and will no doubt do so again. At this moment, I’m lis­ten­ing nei­ther to Ives nor Hein­rich, but to a country-rock album from 1968, The Wichita Train Whis­tle Sings. It’s by Mike Nesmith, remem­bered mostly as being one of television’s Mon­kees, but actu­ally a man of var­ied tal­ents. You can hear many ele­ments of Hein­rich and Ives bub­bling through this almost, but not quite for­got­ten album. And they are bub­bling in many works by singers, com­posers, garage bands, rap­pers, and elec­tronic artists today. To use another Mike Nesmith album title: And the Hits Just Keep On Comin’.

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30001. (Johannes Ock­eghem) Requiem [Missa pro defunc­tis]
30002. (Paul Oak­en­fold) A Lively Mind
30003. (Richard Strauss) Salome, Op.54 [com­plete opera; d. Sinop­oli; Studer, Ter­fel,
. . . . . Hiester­mann]
30004. (Jon Hop­kins) Sin­gu­lar­ity
30005. (Aztec Cam­era) Walk Out to Win­ter: The Best of Aztec Cam­era
30006. (Arthur Sul­li­van [w. W. S. Gilbert]) H. M. S. Pinafore [com­plete opera; D’Oyly Carte]
30007. (Seun Kuti & The Egyp­tians) A Long Way To the Begin­ning
30008. (Albin Lee Mel­dau) About You
30009. (Takashi Yoshi­matsu) Piano Con­certo Memo Flora for Piano and Orches­tra
30010. (Hank Bal­lard & The Mid­nighters) Their Great­est Juke­box Hits
30011. (Earth, Wind & Fire) Earth, Wind & Fire
30012. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­tata #91 “Gelo­bet seist du, Jesu Christ”, bwv.91
30013. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­tata #92 “Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn”, bwv.92
30014. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­tata #93 “Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt wal­ten”, bwv.93
30015. (Alva Noto) Live in Copen­hagen
30016. (Jimi Hen­drix) Elec­tric Lady­land
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